Article of the Week #7
“Six Wars. Six Vets. Six Stories of Courage.”
by Lynn Sherr
From: Parade Magazine
November 6, 2011
Name: ________________Date Assigned: _____________ Date Due: _____________
Directions:
Read the attached article carefully and make notes in the margins as you
read. Show evidence of close reading. As you read, underline and make
notes and codes in the margins as follows:
+ For ideas/claims with which you agree
- For ideas/claims with which you disagree
! For ideas/claims that surprise, anger, or
otherwise cause a strong reaction for you
? For ideas/claims you doubt or find confusing
* For important passages, quotes, or facts that
you want to remember
Beside the coding symbols above, please include brief notes in the
margins that demonstrate your thoughts, reactions, comments, and
connections to the information that you coded.
After reading the entire article closely, please answer the questions that
follow. Use complete sentences.
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Underline in the text Do your coding
and note-taking in
Six Wars, Six Vets, Six Stories of
this margin
Courage
By Lynn Sherr
Over the years, more than 42 million men and women
have served in our armed forces. In honor of Veterans
Day this Friday, PARADE invited six of them—one each
from six of this nation’s wars—to talk about what it means
to be an American soldier. The scenes of their service
have varied widely, from the Pacific theater of World War
II to the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, yet these
veterans all share one quality: a powerful sense of duty.
PARADE: Tell me about going off to war.
YONAS HAGOS (Iraq): There were about 20 of us. We
were picked up, got to base. That’s when you knew it
was real. That night, the president announced we were
going to war with Iraq. I remember one of the sergeants
clearly stating, “Half of you will come back either
wounded or in body bags.” There was silence in the
room.
TOM COREY (Vietnam): It was hard, knowing that I
might not come back whole. I thought that I might lose a
limb. I never thought of being paralyzed.
TRACY GARNER (Desert Storm): I shipped out about 3
in the morning, on a very cold, snowy day. It was the first
time I ever saw tears in my dad’s eyes.
PARADE: Sarah, what was it like saying goodbye to your
kids?
SARAH LETTS-SMITH (Afghanistan, Iraq): How do you
tell an 18-month-old, “I’m not going to see you for a
year”? And when they’re older, in some ways it’s even
harder because they understand. There’s no good way
for moms—or dads, for that matter. Leaving your kids is
really, really difficult.
PARADE: Give me that moment when you’re in
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Afghanistan, in a dangerous situation, and you think
about your kids at home.
LETTS-SMITH: You don’t think about your kids at home
when you’re in a dangerous situation. You think about the
dangerous situation.
PARADE: What word would you use to describe what
you saw?
VARTKESS TARBASSIAN (Korea): Mayhem. Korea
was a country pocked with shell-burst holes. The hills
were devoid of trees. They were burnt and completely
blasted away. The countryside was desolate. You didn’t
run into many civilians. They had all fled southward as
we progressed northward towards the front.
COREY: It wasn’t like what I learned in training. You just
had to feel it, the heat and the noise and the screaming
and somebody’s down and somebody needs help and
the fire—everything going on in a battle. And then your
friends drop in front of you and behind you, and it was
them and not you, and [you think], who is next?
PARADE: What keeps you up at night now?
TARBASSIAN: After I got back, my mother used to come
in, shake me and wake me up, because I’d be screaming
in my sleep that the Chinese are coming, the Chinese are
coming. That wasn’t the case, of course. But it took me
about a year or two just to get over that experience.
COREY: My problem from the war is the wheelchair, not
the PTSD. It’s a constant battle. It’s pain. It never leaves.
HAGOS: When I was hit, my M-16 flew out of my hands,
my Kevlar fell off my head, and I was dangling 10 feet
above the ground. The guy on the side of the Howitzer
grabbed my boots, pulled me inside. I was pronounced
dead over the -radio. I was out for 45 seconds to a
minute, no pulse. I remember getting up. I looked to my
left and saw chunks of my shoulder pretty much missing.
I remember coughing up blood. And then the pain kicked
in. I was screaming. The medic saved my life: She was
getting the IV going and trying to stop the bleeding and
calming me down, helping me.
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PARADE: Do you see yourself as a hero?
HAGOS: No. I went and served my country. I did my
part.
PARADE: What does your Purple Heart mean to you?
HAGOS: This country has done so much for me. I came
here as a foreigner, and I felt like I had to pay it back
somehow. Having the Purple Heart is a reminder that I’ve
paid my debt, for me and my family.
PARADE: Speaking of family, how do your kids feel
about having a military mom?
LETTS-SMITH: I hope they’re proud. It’s been tough for
them, but I think it’s made them stronger. I got my first
deployment orders on Christmas Eve 2001. People then
didn’t pay attention to military families, the kids left
behind. At one point, I had a child who was really
struggling in school. I remember feeling extremely
frustrated that the teachers didn’t seem to recognize how
difficult it was for this little guy with his mom gone. There
wasn’t any safety net. Since that time, they’ve introduced
a lot of things.
PARADE: What was it like to come home?
BOB KESSLER (World War II): My brother and my father
met me at Penn Station, and my grandfather had put a
banner across the top of the house: “Welcome home,
Bob!” I had just turned 20.
PARADE: Was it like the famous scene in Times
Square? Was every girl running up to you and getting
kissed?
KESSLER: Well … there might’ve been a few!
PARADE: Tell me about walking on terra firma again.
KESSLER: The ship I was on had a semi-round bottom,
so I got accustomed to walking as the ship rolled. The
sidewalks in San Pedro, where I first disembarked, don’t
move that way, so at first I must have looked like I was
drunk even though I hadn’t had a drink.
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PARADE: Vartkess, you had a different experience.
TARBASSIAN: Korea was not a popular war. I was
deposited by the railroad at South Station in Boston and
took the subway home. I was in my uniform, and it didn’t
mean a thing to anybody. The other passengers looked
out the windows or went about their business reading the
paper. I didn’t exist. And I said, “What’s going on here?” I
thought somebody would say, “Welcome home.” But that
never happened.
PARADE: How did you feel about that?
TARBASSIAN: Very depressed. I’d think, “This is
something you did for all these people riding the train,
reading their papers, and they don’t even say hello to
you.”
COREY: My arrival was different ’cause I came home on
a medical aircraft to an army hospital, so I missed what
most veterans went through. We all heard the stories
about going through airports, seeing the protests, being
called names. No respect for what you did. Nobody
wanted to talk to you or congratulate you—sometimes
not even your family. So a lotta guys got rid of their
uniforms, threw ’em in the -closet and went on with their
lives. A lot of ’em are still trying to get their lives together
today.
PARADE: How did it make you feel when you saw the
protests on TV?
COREY: I was angry. God let me survive, but I had
friends back in Vietnam who were trying to get home to
their families. I wanted to get out of bed, but I couldn’t do
anything. I couldn’t even talk.
PARADE: Tracy, was it any different coming home from
Iraq?
GARNER: Very different. Coming back to the States, we
had a one-night layover at Westover Air Reserve Base in
Massachusetts. When we arrived, there were close to
1,000 people, arms open, hugging us.
PARADE: What did that reception mean to you?
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GARNER: A lot. I felt that the people who showed up
respected what we did over there.
PARADE: Veterans Day used to be called Armistice Day,
and it was begun after World War I, the so-called “war to
end all wars.” The six of you have fought in six wars
since that time. What does that say about us and war?
GARNER: I personally believe war is something that we
will never get away from. It’s going to go through
generation after generation after generation.
COREY: We need to think a lot more before we get
involved. I don’t have any good things to say about war.
HAGOS: Three words—war is hell.
LETTS-SMITH: What I find amazing is that years later,
you can go back and befriend the people you once
considered an enemy. The human condition is the same
throughout the world. So I think that while wars will be
fought, the beautiful thing is that maybe one day you’ll be
able to go back and relate not as a soldier, but as a
person.
COREY: They’re the same as us—human beings. They
care. When I went back to Vietnam—and I’ve been back
a lot—it was so healing for them and for us to know we
cared about each other. We were put into war by
politicians, and we were only doing our jobs. They were
just defending their country.
PARADE: What do you take away from your service?
HAGOS: You don’t appreciate the price of freedom until
you’ve served. Every morning on patrol I’d see Iraqi kids
living in a shack, about 10 people in one room that barely
had running water and lights. Those things humble you.
And it made me wake up.
PARADE: Wake up to what?
HAGOS: To say, “Wow, I was so naïve back at home. I
took a lot of things for granted.” It made me go back to
my roots and think, “My parents brought me here for a
reason, and if I ever make it out of this war, I don’t want
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to waste that opportunity.” My mom and dad, they’re
janitors. They clean bathrooms and hospital rooms to
make a living. They weren’t given the opportunity to get
educated or make something of themselves. So when I
came back, it took a few years, but I started to realize,
“There’s more to life. Don’t forget what you’ve seen in
Iraq.”
PARADE: How should Americans observe Veterans Day
on Friday?
GARNER: If you know a veteran, offer a simple thank-
you. It goes a long way. “Thank you and we appreciate
your service.”
KESSLER: I’m particularly pleased when the minister
asks all of us who have served to stand. That recognition
is important.
LETTS-SMITH: Our town has a field of flags for vets. I
had a flag last year. It’s beautiful.
PARADE: Even that little thing makes a difference,
knowing that there’s a flag flying for you?
LETTS-SMITH: It’s really not for me. It’s driving by a
nearby field covered with thousands of flags and realizing
that every single one represents somebody who felt so
strongly about this nation that they were willing to put
their lives on the line for it.
HAGOS: There are still people losing their lives. While
we’re sleeping here at night, there are people being shot
at, being ambushed, in Afghanistan or Iraq, away from
their families, their kids, their wives, their mothers. Every
year I go and talk to the kids, and I tell them the same
thing: Don’t celebrate Veterans Day because it happens
to be Veterans Day. Veterans Day, to me, is every day.
—Additional reporting by Jeryl Brunner
http://www.parade.com/news/veterans/index.html
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1. Complete the table below to help keep the members of this
conversation straight:
Veteran Name How In what war In which Something that
old is did the branch of the struck you about
Veteran Veteran fight? military did their story. This
today? the Veteran could be a quote, a
serve? detail of their life, or
a response they gave
to a question.
Yonas Hago
Bob Kessler
Lt. Col.
Shirley Letts-
Smith
Tracy Garner
Tom Corey
Vartkess
Tarbassian
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2. Explain the origins of Veteran’s Day. The article gives a brief
explanation. Go online and research a bit for yourself how this special
day of remembrance began. What was it known as originally? Why was
it created?
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3. How were each of the Veterans in this article welcomed home? Please
complete the table below with details given in the article about their
homecomings.
Veteran Details of their homecoming
Yonas Hagos
Bob Kessler
Lt. Col. Sarah Letts-
Smith
Tracy Garner
Tom Corey
Vartkess Tarbassian
4. Why were the homecoming stories so different from each other? Please
use specific details and quotes from the article to support your thoughts
about why the homecomings were so different?
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5. Think of all the Veteran’s stories given in this article. Which story
touched you the most? Think about which one impacted you the most
so that you remembered it later. Write two paragraphs – one about
who the Veteran is and the second paragraph about why their story
touched/impacted you the most. Use specific details from the article
and interview to support your paragraphs.
6. Please make sure to thank Veterans when you encounter them. On
Veteran’s Day, in particular, make a phone call to relatives who served in the
military and let them know how much you appreciate their service. Ask them
to tell you a bit about their story. These stories are important for Veterans to
tell and for important for you to hear.
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